A preliminary assessment of Emai posture verb parameters

This paper builds on Newman's (2002a) crosslinguistic observation that posture verbs equivalent to sit/stand/lie exhibit distributional asymmetry shown by the hierarchy STAND > SIT > LIE and that they evolve into locative and aspectual markers through the grammaticalization path POSTURE > LOCATIVE > ASPECT. To assess these proposals, we engage data from Nigeria's Edoid language Emai. It has verbs with a polysemous structure encompassing posture (‘stand’, ‘sit’, ‘lie’) and continuative state (‘wait’, ‘stay’, ‘sleep’). Important for selecting between contrasting sense assignments are the parameters of spatial and temporal extent. Minimal verb constructions exhibit either posture or continuative state interpretations. Constructions with locative complement, temporal adjunct or verb in series absolutely or partially constrain sense assignment. Asymmetry of sense assignment and of assignment within each sense leads to alternative proposals for the posture verb hierarchy as well as grammaticalization path.